The Command Line » Podcast

TCLP 2010-09-15 Interview: Randy Chertkow of Beatnik Turtle

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:15:51 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

There is no new hacker word of the week this week.

The feature this week is the interview I recorded with Randy Chertkow of Beatnik Turtle. If you are interested, here are the 2007, 2008, and 2009 interviews as well. In the interview, we mention the Indie Guide web site, Randy and Jason’s columns at Electronic Musician, and TrackMyDisc.com.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-09-08 Creative Commons, Legal Issue Panel from Dragon*Con 2010

Thomas Gideon — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:05:36 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a quick end of month update on the podcast’s finances and you can find all my posts from Dragon*Con past and present using the dragoncon tag.

There is no new hacker word of the week this week.

The feature this week is the panel audio from the Creative Commons and legal issues panel I moderated at Dragon*Con 2010. I was joined once again by Randy Chertkow of Beatnik Turtle and Courtney Perry, lawyer and now law professor. The new panelist this year was Brian Ibbott of Coverville who was very generous in sharing his experiences as an early and still active music podcaster. In the discussion we mention both “Free Culture“, by Lawrence Lessig, and “The Public Domain“, by James Boyle.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-25 Inner Chapter: Superstitions

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:34:24 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, the last reminder of my impending travel to Dragon*Con. Also a quick review of Neil Netanel’s “Copyright’s Paradox“.

Listener feedback is a thoughtful and thought provoking email from Grant who wrote in response to my discussion of ebooks in the developing world.

The hacker word of the week this week is finger-pointing syndrome.

The feature this week is an Inner Chapter on the subject of superstitions.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-22 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:34:52 +0000

This is news cast 223, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, an obligatory reminder there will be no new shows on the 29th, the 1st and the 5th because of Dragon*Con. Also, if you are in the north west of the UK, check out U^3 an UnWorkShop being held the 28th of August.

This week’s security alerts are a Firefox bug bypasses URL protection for embedded frames and an old Linux Kernel flaw allows exploits to acquire root privileges.

In this week’s news the end of privacy, a new probabilistic processor design, a thirty year old crypto system is resistant to quantum cryptanalysis, and privacy concerns (among others) over Facebook’s new Places feature. The EFF already has a guide to protecting your privacy against it.

Following up this week EFF appealing the Jewel v. NSA warrantless wiretapping case and negotiators concede ACTA isn’t about counterfeiting after all.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-18 Inner Chapter: Scalability

Thomas Gideon — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:46:27 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a reminder about the upcoming CopyNight here in DC and of my impending travel to Dragon*Con.

There is no new hacker word of the week this week.

The feature this week is an Inner Chapter on the subject of scalability. In it, I mention my previous discussion of speed and performance.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-15 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:46:16 +0000

This is news cast 222, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, letting everyone know Dragon*Con is coming up. I’ll be taking a little more time this year off from the show to prepare for my travel there. There will be no news cast on either September 29th or the 5th. There will be no feature cast on the 1st and possibly the 8th, depending on what recordings I come back with and how much work they need.

This week’s security alerts are first Android SMS trojan and a vulnerability in OpenSSL 1.0.

In this week’s news artificial life evolves a basic memory, John Doe who challenged the FBI freed to speak, touch screens open to smudge attack, and the state of 3D printing. The book I mention in the a-life segment is “Complexity” by Mitch Waldrop.

Following up this week just the announcement of what Google and Verizon were up to. There was an op-ed from the two CEOs though I don’t think it added anything. There was also a ton of analysis and commentary though I am going to recommend that from EFF’s Cindy Cohn. Not surprisingly, Google has already posted a defense.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-08 News

Thomas Gideon — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:08:31 +0000

This is news cast 221, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, my thanks to Mike for his donation for which he has earned a merit badge. A final reminder there will not be a feature cast this coming week, I’ll be out in San Francisco for most of the week. Also, a quick review of George Mann’s “The Osiris Ritual“. I reviewed his first novel, “The Affinity Bridge”, earlier in the Summer.

This week’s security alerts are RFIDs can be provably read at over 60 meters and an algorithmic attack on reCAPTCHA.

In this week’s news an algorithm to improve the energy efficiency of mesh networks, concerns over a citizen vigilante group monitor ISPs though the groups claims may be overstated, Google ends Wave development though is dedicated to learning from its failure in this case probably from its complexity despite adding more resources and opening up to more users, and unpacking what exactly went on between Google and Verizon especially as they deny claims of an anti-neutrality pact (even on Twitter). Odds are good they are still meeting and talking to some end which may be why the NYT is sticking to its story. Cringely has the most intriguing guess at their possible goal.

Following up this week EFF offers assistance to targets of the US Copyright Group and the FCC ends closed door discussions on its net neutrality plan.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-04 Habits of an Infovore

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:32:52 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, sharing Steve’s badge photo, last month’s revenue update, and a reminder there will be no feature cast next week as I’ll be out of town.

The hacker word of the week this week is finger trouble .

The feature this week is a monologue my habits as an infovore. How I consume information is very much informed by current thinking on multitasking.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-08-01 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:13:12 +0000

This is news cast 220, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, an apology for missing the last two shows, though I had good reason. I will be in San Francisco from August 9th to the 11th for Cassandra Summit and a training day. If anyone is interested in a meet up Monday or Tuesday night, let me know. And if you don’t read the web site, I am a finalist for a Parsec award.

This week’s security alerts are Apple fixes the autofill bug in Safari that I didn’t get to discuss last week and AT&T said it wouldn’t interfere with a Black Hat demo and was true to its word.

In this week’s news EFF wins three DMCA exemptions with deeper analysis from both them and Public Knowledge. There were two additional exemptions granted and many others that were not. I get why most of the coverage is so positive but I cannot help but give voice to my inner cynic. Also, the Senate prepares privacy legislation as industry discusses self regulation, a couple of stories about e-books in developing nations, and Slashdot is losing relevance on the social web.

Following up this week Al Franken frames net neutrality as key free speech issue and Canadian C-32 is clearly following the US DMCA.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-07-21 The True Burden of Forking

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:35:36 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a quick review of the tabletop game, “The Stars are Right“.

Listener feedback this week is from Andrew and Carey, both of whom responded to the last feature on complex privacy .

The hacker word of the week this week is Finagle’s Law.

The feature this week is a monologue considering the true burden of forking. It was inspired by my recent reading of Clay Shirky’s excellent, “Here Comes Everybody“.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-07-18 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:35:44 +0000

This is news cast 219, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, an admission of a mistake around correctly observing the licenses of some works I used after I stopped using the non-commercial clause in the license for the podcast. The net effect should be none to you, the listener, but it seemed like a good teaching moment and a reminder that as easy as Creative Commons makes it to understand their licenses, that doesn’t prevent making honest mistakes. Thanks, Randal.

This week’s security alerts are Mozilla blocking an add on that was nabbing passwords (via ZDNet) including how the backdoor was discovered and a crack that could affect libraries used to implement OAuth and OpenID.

In this week’s news Android App Inventor, in keeping with Google’s spirit of developer inclusion vs. Apple’s puzzling decisions, promises creating apps without coding though some interesting questions remain, a comic book on digital civil rights in Europe produce by EDRi among others that I think would be a good companion to Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother“, NSA whistle blower exhausted all official channels to raise a complaint, and consider the question of search neutrality and whether co-opting the rhetoric of net neutrality is wise.

Following up this week European ACTA negotiators update the EP in secret and ACTA is coming down to a fight between the US and the EU.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-07-11 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:25:01 +0000

This is news cast 218, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, thanks to new donor, Scott, and a request that existing donor Ryan contact me so I can send him his merit badge. Also, there will be new feature cast this week. I need to catch up on writing features for the show and I will be attending two events in DC this week: What Does Light Taste Like and Decoding Digital Activism.

This week’s security alerts are researchers form collective in response to Microsoft’s dismissal of a security concern and REMnux, a linux distro designed for reverse engineering malware.

In this week’s news new quantum states could lead to new approaches to quantum computing, the Apache web server conquers the world, another constructive criticism of transparency, and the NSA is looking to implement domestic surveillance of our infrastructure though they are quick to deny any active monitoring.

Following up this week, two UK ISPs are taking the Digital Economy Act to High Court.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-07-07 Will We Ever Have Effective Complex Privacy Controls?

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:49:23 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

Listener feedback this week is from quite a few folks. Matt wrote in about outliners, asking what I do in particular to bend vim to this task. I use a vimrc line like “autocmd BufEnter,BufNew *.notes set sw=4 ts=4 expandtab spell tw=0 foldmethod=indent smartindent”. Colin posted a comment about AAC and chapter marks. John had a much more incisive comment on my switching to an open stack segment. Ian also wrote about outliners, suggesting org-mode and in particular a couple of screencasts. And Max shared his experiences switching to Linux not once, but twice.

The hacker word of the week this week is filter.

The feature this week is a rant digging into the question of whether we’ll ever develop effective controls that match our complex expectations of privacy and digging into the source of that complexity. I mention a couple of posts by danah boyd, some criticism of the demands made of Facebook by privacy advocates, my reading of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody“, and small world networks.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-07-04 A Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace

Thomas Gideon — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 02:47:56 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

Rather than try to shoe horn a full news cast in, amongst the weekend’s festivities, I figured I would share a reading of a piece inspired by the Holiday here in the US but more appropriate to an audience on the net: A Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace, original penned by John Perry Barlow in 1996. The music I used underneath it is track 34 from Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts, used under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

There are no detailed show notes for this episode. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. The audio itself may indicate that the episode is available under BY-SA terms, only, but requires BY-NC-SA to be compatible with the NIN track’s BY-NC-SA License.

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TCLP 2010-06-30 Cory Doctorow at CopyNight DC

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:06:52 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, thanks to my friend Chooch for saving my bacon with the event audio I am sharing as this week’s feature. Also, with regards to the show’s 5th anniversary, I realize I pretty much said my peace on the subject last week. Just trying to keep that spirit of being receptive to surprise alive going forward.

I will save this week’s feedback, of which there is rather a lot, until next week.

There is no hacker word of the week this week.

The feature this week is a recording of the talk Cory Doctorow gave at this month’s CopyNight, here in DC.

There are no detailed show notes for this episode. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-06-27 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:53:38 +0000

This is news cast 217, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, an apology for missing the last news cast.

This week’s security alerts are attacking the attackers and anti-malware is a poor substitute for common sense.

In this week’s news NY meet Silicon Valley, the first report from the new IP enforcement czar and some analysis and some reactions, looking at HTML5 beyond video, and an explanation why Share Alike is open and Non Commercial is not.

Following up this week, the debate around C-32 turns adversarial and judge rules in Viacom case that YouTube is protected by DMCA safe harbors.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-06-23 Switching Back to an Open Stack

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:03:58 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, thanks to Paul, Steve and Ryan for their new monthly donations starting this week. Badges are on their way or should be soon. I also remark on my upcoming 5th anniversary as a podcaster for those that don’t read the blog.

Listener feedback this week is from Jed in response to the Inner Chapter on why programming is hard. I mention the news cast from the 13th, the piece Bruce Sterling mentions about smart-aleck programmers by Jonathan Edwards.

The hacker word of the week this week is fence.

The feature this week is a monologue discussing my decision to move back to an open stack here in the lab. I mention Dan Gillmor’s Salon article discussing the very same thing and my Nowhere to Go rant.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-06-16: Inner Chapter: Why Programming is Hard

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:49:03 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a mention of the merit badges arriving and the first pictures.

Also a quick review of “The Affinity Bridge” by George Mann.

There is no listener feedback this week.

The hacker word of the week this week is feetch feetch.

The feature this week is an Inner Chapter consider the question of why programming is hard. In it, I mention “Dreaming in Code ” by Scott Rosenberg, an interview about the CHAOS reports, Kolmogorov complexity, Jordan Peterson’s talk on TVO’s Big Ideas.

View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

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TCLP 2010-06-13 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:46:55 +0000

This is news cast 216, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, an update on the badge experiment.

This week’s security alerts are diffusing botnet control makes them more robust and bad passwords and the economics around perpetuating them.

In this week’s news open source could make attackers’ jobs easier, understanding the real risks of Android fragmentation, programmers should stop being smart-alecks, and heated atomic force microscopes for 12nm graphene elements.

Following up this week, another social network bill of rights and judge may dismiss most defendants from US Copyright Group suits.

View the detailed show notes online. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-06-09 Free Yourself: Open Source Software for Everyday Use

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 01:25:45 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

I will save listener feedback for the next show.

There is no hacker word of the week this week due to the length of the feature.

The feature this week is the second of two panel recordings I captured at Balticon 44. The panel was titled, “Free Yourself: Open Source Software for Everyday Use”. My co-panelists were Brad Smith and none other than Eric Raymond. I found ESR to be especially fascinating on this panel, with some thought provoking ideas and fun stories.

There are no detailed show notes for this show. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-06-06 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:22:04 +0000

This is news cast 215, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, just a pointer to my thoughts on Balticon 44 and a recap on advertising, the badge experiment, and Flattr so far.

This week’s security alerts are OS choice does not equal security and an Android rootkit.

In this week’s news Google drops Microsoft for internal use citing security reasons though some are skeptical, figuring out if Wikileaks spun up using documents intercepted from Tor with thoughts from both the Tor project and Wikileaks itself, IBM’s 40 year old Muppet sales films, and a new paper debunks certain suggested advantages of quantum computing.

Following up this week, if you are tired of Facebook then check out a Firefox extension that aims to help preserve your privacy while using it and India tries to gather opposition to ACTA.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-06-02 Art, Music and Literature in the Age of Digital Reproducibility

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:59:48 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

I will save listener feedback for the next show or the one after that.

There is no listener feedback this week due to the length of the feature.

The feature this week is the first of two panel recordings I captured at Balticon 44. The panel was titled, “Art, Music and Literature in the Age of Digital Reproducibility”, and was a fantastic, far ranging discussion. My co-panelists where Norm Sherman of The Drabblecast, Dave Slusher of Evil Genius Chronicles, Phil Rossi, and Dan Tabor of Geekadelphia.

There are no detailed show notes for this show. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-05-26 Inner Chapter: Legacy Code

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:24:40 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a reminder there will be no news show this Sunday as I’ll be at Balticon. Also, a quick review of “Dreaming in Code“, by Scott Rosenberg.

Listener feedback this week is from Randal on the Dr. Who as a hacker and DeepGeek in response to my discussion of Danah Boyd’s essay on Facebook as a utility.

The hacker word of the week this week is featurectomy.

The feature this week is an Inner Chapter on the subject of legacy code.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

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TCLP 2010-05-23 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:41:37 +0000

This is news cast 214, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, thanks to new monthly donor, John Taylor Williams and his wife, Mia. Thank you to fellow Flattr beta testers who have been flattring my posts. I should have an update on how this service compares to donations and ads at the end of the month. My Balticon schedule is up, if you are going to be there, come and say high. Better yet, join me for the unofficial FLOSS and Tech Geek BoF. There will be no news show that Sunday but should be feature casts before and after the weekend.

This week’s security alerts are Chrome’s private mode leaks info and FTC looks into privacy concerns with digital copiers.

In this week’s news opening of VP-8 video codec becomes so much more including news event Microsoft will support it (kind of) and YouTube will switch to it for larger videos going forward, a technical analysis of VP-8 now that it is open, Facebook’s urge towards social utility will invite regulation, and an early, official history of NSA computers.

Following up this week The Pirate Party steps in to host The Pirate Bay and EFF issues a strong criticism of Google’s latest privacy mistake.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-05-19 Interview: Cory Doctorow, “For the Win”

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:24:19 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a few quick announcements. I will be at Balticon Memorial Day weekend and posting my speaking schedule soon. If you are going to be there, come and say, “Hi”. May’s CopyNight will be next Tuesday, the 25th, with special guest Carl Malamud. Next month’s CopyNight will also have a special guest, Cory Doctorow as it happens. That CopyNight will be June 28th, a Monday. For more details about the DC CopyNight, visit the web site.

Due to the length of the interview, I didn’t get to any listener feedback this week. There also is no new hacker word of the week for the same reason.

The feature this week is an interview with Cory Doctorow discussing the issues explored in his latest book just released from Tor, “For the Win“. I caught up with him over Skype on his current book tour. We mention quite a bit of material, roughly in chronological order:

“Amerika“
“English as She Is Spoken“
Anda’s Game
Beyond Circumvention, by Ethan Zuckerman
How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet, by Douglas Adams
It was Michael Weinberg, from Public Knowledge, on This Week in Law who proposed thinking about three strikes with the telephone
“Content” is the essay collection containing World of Democracycraft
Facebook is a Utility, All Utilities are Regulated, by Danah Boyd
Diaspora*, Kickstarter, and Quit Facebook Day
Jane McGonigal created Superstruct and the other game I couldn’t remember properly is Evoke
Alice commissioned the award winning game, Smokescreen
Power Punctuation! in three parts: part 1, part 2, part 3
The Geertz mentioned is anthropologist, Clifford Geertz
io9 scooped me and has more details on “Rapture of the Nerds“

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-05-12 Review: Postsingular and Hylozoic

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 13 May 2010 00:49:54 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

Listener feedback this week is Philip, Jed and Brad who all commented on my Dr. Who monologue. Sergio, Claudio, and Curtis also chatted up the segment on Identi.ca. Mr wrote in about my NoSQL rant. And pseudomorph wrote in response to the Mozilla Account Manager story from the 2nd news cast. He shared a couple of links on digital identity and whether intellectual monopoly is making us dumb.

The hacker word of the week this week is fear and loathing.

The feature this week is an in depth book review of “Postsingular” and “Hylozoic” by Rudy Rucker. In the review, I mention the two short stories from which the first book was developed, Rucker’s blog post questioning the wisdom of computronium, my earlier review of one of Rucker’s non-fiction works, the internet of things, and the free download edition of “Postsingular”.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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Cory Doctorow’s Latest, “For the Win”, Launches Today

Thomas Gideon — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:03:09 +0000

Long time listeners and readers know I am a huge fan of Cory Doctorow’s writings, both fiction and non-fiction. I am thrilled that his latest novel, “For the Win“, is out today. I was lucky enough to get an advanced reader copy and can definitely recommend the book highly for those that enjoyed Cory’s previous young adult novel, “Little Brother“.

I would say without hesitation that I enjoyed “For the Win” even more than “Little Brother”. I dug the ideas explored in the book more than I expected–organizing labor, virtual economies, the effects of online games on globalization and youth culture. The dialectic is very well woven into the stories of all the characters, you rarely if ever feel like you are receiving an info dump. The only thing I suspect some people may not like, depending on their tastes, is that the narrative is shared across the points of view of several characters. I don’t mind that, personally, but I have friends who do. For the younger readers, there is a bit of violence but it isn’t gratuitous and should be fine for teen aged readers.

I read my copy during the big blizzard earlier this year, when we had no power for a few days and no heat. It thoroughly kept my mind off of a very worrying situation and held up to non-stop reading over the course of a few days. Not many books would have held my interest well enough to read pretty much continuously like that, “For the Win” definitely did.

Of course, as with all of Cory’s books, you can download a free electronic copy of the book, in a number of formats, and see for yourself if you enjoy it enough to pick up a print edition. I love that this time out he included my favorite format, ePub. That format is a fan conversion and is made possible by the liberal license Cory uses. You can remix or convert the book any which way you like as long as you share your changes and don’t charge for the end result.

As with “Little Brother”, Cory is working with educators and librarians to get this book into the hands of kids. There are more details on how you can help with that effort at the book’s web site. You’ll also find a link to the book tour that is kicking off this week. I encourage you to go out and see Cory if he’s coming to your town. He’s a dynamic and engaging speaker and reader plus you can pick up a signed copy of the book if you are a fan.

Lastly, I will be interviewing Cory while he’s on the book tour specifically to dig into various aspects of the book and the tropes he explores in it. If you have a relevant question you’d like me to pose, send it to me before Thursday the 13th and I’ll include as many of your questions as time allows. That interview should go out next week, Wednesday the 19th.

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TCLP 2010-05-09 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:25:23 +0000

This is news cast 213, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, thanks to new monthly donor, Jamie. Also, I was interviewed for Uber Leet Hacker Force Radio, part of Hacker Public Radio. My part starts around minute twenty-three. Lastly, I will be interviewing Cory Doctorow about his latest YA novel, “For the Win“. I’m scheduled to do so on Thursday, the 13th, so if you have any questions for him, get them to me before then.

This week’s security alerts are a new attack technique that bypasses most common antivirus programs demonstrated by matousec.com and study that shows programming language choice doesn’t affect security.

In this week’s news Hugo Gernsback as futurist (I’ve read more about him as a publisher) including some criticism of his views of the place of science in science fiction, why computers crash but biology does not, a rallying cry for parallelism even though the trend is well established and the challenges hard then first supposed, and Google releases a code lab and sources to teach and learn security through reading code and hands on exercises.

Following up this week the FCC’s third way to pursue network neutrality and the FCC allows selectable output control with some qualifications.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-05-05 Dr. Who as a Hacker

Thomas Gideon — Thu, 06 May 2010 01:04:53 +0000

This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, thanks to Graham and [si]dragon for their donations. Also, a quick review of “Permanence“, by Karl Schroeder.

Listener feedback this week is from Robert who posted a comment in response to my NoSQL rant.

The hacker word of the week this week is block transfer computations.

The feature this week is a monologue consider Dr. Who as a hacker. In it, I mention a section from the Wikipedia page on Dr. Who.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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TCLP 2010-05-02 News

Thomas Gideon — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:44:03 +0000

This is news cast 212, an episode of The Command Line Podcast.

In the intro, a quick update on the advertising experiment.

This week’s security alerts are Symantec plans to PGP and a massive quantity of GoDaddy hosted WordPress sites are under attack.

In this week’s news Cyber Privacy Act introduced that would use takedowns against personal info including the flaws that would go along with it, new report shows trillions contributed to the economy by fair use with specific examples of what that means though the point is how the report was produced, Mozilla releases first code for its identity system (which I briefly wrote about earlier ), and raised by Radio Shack inspired by a Wired article and resonating with Levy’s “Hackers”.

Following up this week USTR claims official ACTA draft proves prior rumors were false and MSIE9 to support HTML5 video but only with H.264.

Grab the detailed show notes with time offsets and additional links either as PDF or OPML. You can also grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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